Thread: Absolutely, positively the last word on spine taping

No offense, but I think you have waaaaay too much time on your hands.

Originally Posted by Leighton

1/3 of the razor honed away would probably take a hundred years of daily use. However, as we well know, razors do survive for hundreds of years....

They do but I won't. If thirty years is the timeline for the regrind I'll have to worry about that when I'm 90.

I'm probably not going to tape any of the razors I currently have, because (a) I'm lazy, (b) none of them are showpieces, and (c) they all have very narrow bevels which I don't want to make narrower. But if I ever come into possession of a valuable & ornate razor (worked spine, etc) I won't hesitate to tape it.

I would like to note that the title says last word on taping and this thread has 33 replies.

Now we return to this continuing thread. Carry on, and forgive my interruption.

Yes, there have been a couple of threads about this in the past. An interesting one I believe was posted by mparker. A year or more down the track Icedog did one as well. Then there was the one by Randy very early on, and bevansmw earlier in the year. We have a fixation with the razor angle and tape, and I think it is about time this stuff was wiki-ed...lol!

While I think the calculations look sound, I think the general consensus is that from a practical point of view using the hypotenuse gives more accurate measures of just where your angle is at, as the tan calculations require you to measure to a point inside the spine.

But for the purposes of figuring out when your razor is trashed as a function of spine width, I guess it does not matter so much.

On that point though, I tend to agree with Glen et al. If the way you hone means that in a relatively short period of time (say 3 - 5 years) you are likely to remove so much metal that you are in danger of trashing the razor, you have more to worry about than whether you tape or not IMO.

James.

I recently purchased a Dorko from Ebay. When I honed it up (taping the spine), I noticed that the bevel was about 1/2 the width I usually see.

I wondered if this could be due to this razor being repeatedly honed with tape. I suspect not because the shape of the razor seemed to be that of a normal round point and it had a 6/8 width.

After reading all these equations etc, on the topic spine taping, I look to the most common sense view. If you put tape on the spine of a razor you bought pre-honed by a pro, it would create a double bevel. Dud shave. No tape to ,my way of thinking, and I agree with Lynn re taping, is that the steel on the spine and on the edge will wear at a consistent rate, thus retaining the original geometry of the razor. This whole forum is about getting the 'best shave', invisible honewear only gets stuffed up by altering your honing angle. This includes the two prime new blade sellers, Dovo and TI, they dont tape, so are we suggesting going back to the 1 k and re-setting everything? Not me folks.

This has been gone over many time since 2009...so it wasn't the absolute last word...lol

When I took up wet shaving with a DE razor & brush etc, I had no idea of how compelling this 'hobby' - 'way of life' would become. All of us blokes from Sydney to Alberta, have been strangled by the notion of shaving, as men do, but doing it as history has shown us. It's not a cultural thing defined by country, race etc, it's just a challenge, and if you put in the effort, you learn to shave with a str8t, then you want to hone them. Collecting 6 or 7 hones, then to justify that you need at least 7 razors......dear oh dear. Here in Australia it's the same as Canada, Deutschland, Europe, UK. I do it cause I love it.

You mean tape ?

Originally Posted by bobski

When I took up wet shaving with a DE razor & brush etc, I had no idea of how compelling this 'hobby' - 'way of life' would become. All of us blokes from Sydney to Alberta, have been strangled by the notion of shaving, as men do, but doing it as history has shown us. It's not a cultural thing defined by country, race etc, it's just a challenge, and if you put in the effort, you learn to shave with a str8t, then you want to hone them. Collecting 6 or 7 hones, then to justify that you need at least 7 razors......dear oh dear. Here in Australia it's the same as Canada, Deutschland, Europe, UK. I do it cause I love it.